


hang me in rags

by glitteration



Category: True Detective
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 03:25:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1289398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteration/pseuds/glitteration
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>some open doors need to be ignored and some chances weren't ever really chances at all, or: maggie hart breaks circles and proves the world really is round.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hang me in rags

**Author's Note:**

> this takes place as a coda to the scene in the bar and was written pre-finale, so i'm sure this won't be canon compliant asap.

“Ten years is a long time, Rust.”

His face twists in that irritated, puzzled expression he always got when she refused to simply bow to his wisdom; she can tell by the way his shoulders tense, his steps falter a bit. There’s a surge of triumph in ugly places she thought long dead and buried, left behind when she left _them_. And it was them, she’s mature enough to admit it now. There were ties between them all, spiderweb thin filaments of connection that nonetheless hold firm today, even just as echoes; like fingertips swiped over a dusty mantle while reminding yourself of where everything is in a home you haven’t visited since childhood.

He doesn’t speak for a long moment, finally settling on, “could’ve sworn I said it was time for you to go” in a voice that’s half as quiet as his usual drawl. It makes her want to apologize, to get up and go; instead she shifts on the uncomfortable bar stool, finally giving up and hooking her toes under the wooden slats towards the bottom like a child just to keep her purchase. She waited on his words, he can wait on hers.

“You did, yes.” This time he turns to face her, and there’s something raw under the half dazed, half-sarcastic smile tucked at the edges of his mouth and she wonders if it hurt badly when Marty hit him because he couldn’t hit her. “But I don’t agree.”

His hands clench and release, and he turns away; once he turns back his face is placid, mocking, and he hands her a highball— she told him how much she hated them once, Scotch and soda bringing to mind dad and his friends and the cloying, nauseating stench of cigar smoke and dogwood flowers. “Fine, then. You stay, you drink.”

She takes a sip without grimacing, raises the glass in a toast. “I meant it, what I said.” That she had been (is) sorry, as much as she was grateful. This was about Marty just like everything’s been about Marty since he grinned at her and slung a letter jacket across her shoulders, casually told everyone she was his girl and the pride was almost as wonderful as the happiness, then; that anything between them has been and always will be about a third, invisible person is the most unfair blow she dealt him, in the end. “I know it’s not… the easiest thing to talk about, but I felt like it needed to be said again.”

Felt like you needed it hear it. I needed to say it. Marty is a blank wall of a man, confused to this day about why she did it. Why is was necessary, why it had to be _Rust_ , why why why why Maggie why’d it have to be this way? The divorce proceedings were an endless parade of whys and he still doesn’t understand, won’t ever understand. Closure there only comes from what happiness she can eke out without him, in the way the girls are happier and she only misses him dully in spite of it all. Rust knew right away— or he knew the ugly side of it all, the genuine gratitude lost in his disgust.

“You trying to give me advice again, Maggie?” He busies himself again with pouring himself a drink, the hard angry set of the muscles in his back and neck giving lie to the flippant words. “Because I don’t recall that going so well for either of us last go-round on that one, now.”

He’d rather talk about what it was like to fuck in his sad, empty apartment, she thinks, than accept her apology and it makes her push harder, penitence and vindictiveness mixing again in a way she thought she bleached from her psyche years ago. “I did what I needed to do.” What he told her to do— maybe Rust always thought taking care of her girls meant staying together _for_ them, but for all his incisiveness with criminals he was just as blind to her as Marty was, in his way. She unhooks her toes, standing and pushing the rest of the drink away without finishing it. “Thanks for the drink, Rust.” 

She makes it to the door in silence, heels clicking against the floorboards with a gentle finality. 

“I did, too.” She’s glad her face is turned away, there, because Rust’s anger and horror had been worse than anything else. “Too classy for this fucking wreck.” Pausing with her hand on the door, she remembers his face before he knew, remembers how he’d come and eat dinner on nights Marty wasn’t home and soak up her attention greedily, finding excuses to stay longer and fix the little bits of nothing left undone in Marty’s renewed inattention. Then she remembers some doors close and stay closed for a reason.

The sticky, heavy air is a needed slap in the face as she pushes the door open and the memories away and leaves without saying goodbye, ignoring the prickling at the back of her neck as Rust watches her walk away.


End file.
